27/09/2024 General News, Timed-Online Auctions, Insights
Michaela Younge’s unique choice of felt as her primary medium is a significant aspect of her practice, making her stand out amongst her contemporaries. Felt is often associated with traditional crafts and folk art, instead of fine art. Younge, in employing this unusual art medium, thus subverts conventional practices and pushes boundaries as she blends craftsmanship, narrative, and cultural commentary in her intricate tapestries.
LEFT: Lot 23 | Medieval scene | R15 000 - 20 000
RIGHT: Lot 22 | He Was Well Versed In The Zodiac; But His Letters Were Weak | R10 000 - 15 000
The artist’s process involves painstakingly felting wool, cutting, layering, and assembling the fibres to create scenes that often depict surreal, dream-like worlds. Her works have a deceptively playful aesthetic and are visually rich with scenes that resemble tableaux from fairy tales or folklore but are infused with modern anxieties and existential themes. Her narratives are rich with allegory, exploring the depths of identity, power, and the human condition.
There is also a sense of grotesque comedy in Younge’s work, where characters are depicted engaging in bizarre and surreal activities, caught in compromising situations, or involved in morally ambiguous acts. The absurdity of these scenes amplifies the emotional tension within them, forcing the viewer to confront uncomfortable realities through a lens of humour and satire.
Detail image of lot 22: He Was Well Versed In The Zodiac; But His Letters Were Weak
Richly textured, the appearance of felt can evoke a sense of gentleness or child-like innocence. Younge leverages this association to create an immediate sense of familiarity and comfort in her pieces. However, this initial softness contrasts sharply with the dark, unsettling themes in the works, generating tension between the medium and the message.
This tension between the familiar and the unsettling is key to her storytelling, as it draws the viewer into a false sense of comfort, only to reveal more disturbing layers beneath. The use of felt, therefore, is not merely a technical choice but a conceptual one, allowing Younge to explore complex, often contradictory themes about human experience, morality, and society while maintaining a visually disarming presentation.
The artist has a remarkable ability to mix the grotesque with the absurd, inviting the viewer into worlds that are simultaneously familiar and unsettling. Her work does not offer simple answers and challenges the viewer to look beyond the surface, beyond the soft, familiar texture of felt, and engage with the unsettling, often subversive narratives hidden within.
Auction
26 September to 3 October 2024
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